AURORA | Officials from Aurora Public Schools unveiled hundreds of pages of early-stage plans to overhaul five beleaguered schools in northwest Aurora Feb. 5, marking the first step in a months-long approval process.
Longer school days, a stronger emphasis on competency rather than time spent in the classroom, and shortened teacher contracts were among the dozens of new recommendations outlined in the quintet of first-draft innovation plans. If approved, the proposals would grant the affected schools innovation status, which is tied to a state law passed in 2008 and frees qualifying schools from many state and local regulations, including those regarding budgeting, graduation requirements and credit dispersement.
The district’s decision to apply for innovation status marks a last-ditch effort to right the course of some the state’s most troubled schools, which regularly battle abysmal attendance, dropout and graduation rates, as well as subpar test scores. Only about 17 percent of APS students who took the standardized PARCC test last spring met or exceeded the state’s recently adopted, more stringent expectations in math and English language arts.
The plans, which were compiled over the course of the past eight months using input from administrators, teachers, students, parents, community members and outside research groups, sketch out distinct recommendations for each of the affected schools: Aurora Central High School, Aurora West College Preparatory Academy, Boston K-8 and Paris and Crawford elementary schools.
Many of the most dramatic recommendations are found in the 116-page document for Aurora Central, which is currently in the last year of the state’s five-year accountability clock. Most notably, the Aurora Central plan calls for mandating that all teacher contracts at the school run for only one year at a time.
“ACHS needs the flexibility in staffing to allow for quick and actionable decisions to ensure students engage with the most effective instructional staff at all times,” according to the report.
That change in the way the district handles teacher contracts — despite providing more opportunity to earn performance-based bonuses — is concerning to Amy Nichols, president of the Aurora Education Association, which acts as the APS teachers union. Nichols said that while many specifics have yet to be released, she’s nervous some teachers haven’t been given the time or resources to fully understand the known details of the proposed plans and agreements.
“We want to make sure that teachers know what they’re voting on,” she said. “Our concern is: Have these teachers and (schools) had enough time to dig into these plans?”
Other proposals for the five schools vying to gain innovation status range from making teacher evaluations more flexible to allowing non-licensed instructors to help ESL students. And although each framework document is unique to its specific school, all the proposals are tethered to the bedrock of providing the schools greater autonomy.
In order to gain that independence, the school plans must survive several rounds of approvals before being implemented, which ideally would happen at the start of the 2016-17 school year, according to district officials.
More detailed plans for each school, which will total between 50 and 75 pages in length, are expected to be released Feb. 11 or 12. Finalized versions will be sent to staff at each school for approval the following week. The plans will then need to be approved by the APS board of education in March and again by the state board of education later this spring.
If the plans aren’t approved at any stage in the process, the district could hand the management of an unapproved school over to a third-party group. At Aurora Central, officials could elect to reconstitute the school, which would trigger a wholesale departure of the current staff, according to APS Superintendent Rico Munn.
“I (would) use one of the last tools that is available to me, and that is the tool of reconstitution,” Munn said in an interview last week of a scenario in which Central’s innovation plan is rejected.
In the meantime, the district is slated to hold a community meeting Feb. 16 to gather additional input on the plans at 4:30 p.m. at Aurora Central High School.
Nichols said that her group will continue to hold educational sessions for teachers to better understand what they will be voting on later this month. She said that the AEA held a meeting for teachers in January, and that teachers who have been involved in creating the proposals have expressed optimism.
“Teachers are excited about some of the things they’ve had a chance to put together, and that’s great,” Nichols said. “You have to have buy-in and engagement from the people who will be doing the work, so that’s a big plus.”